USA TODAY Review

‘I Do and I Don’t’ weds scholarship to cinema

Hollywood is wild about sex, adores courtship and is more infatuated with wedding rituals than a rampaging bridezilla. Anyone who has witnessed what passes for a relationship romp at the multiplex in the past decade or so realizes this is stating the obvious.

But marriage, often the end result of all that pitching of woo, is a taboo subject as a selling point for a movie. Seems that most people are all too familiar with the mundane realities of the institution. Or, as funnyman Eddie Cantor once said, according to I Do and I Don't, an expansive overview of nuptial-oriented films: "Marriage is not a word. It's a sentence."

No shock then that the theme of matrimony is often camouflaged within the confines of a more glamorous, romantic, adventurous or compelling setting. Call it a murder mystery, travelogue, wartime romance, workplace farce, detective story, period piece — anything but a tale about a wedded couple coping with everyday problems.

Consider the recent spate of year-end films, many vying for Oscar attention. Amour is a devastating drama about old age, yet at its core is a well-worn marriage. This Is Forty is a comedy about this generation's indulgence of late onset maturity but it is really about a spoiled couple renewing their commitment. The latest telling of Anna Karenina is a fanciful trip to 19th-century Russia that unfolds in a shabby-chic theater, but still focuses on a wife torn between societal expectations and the pursuit of personal passion. Even Lincoln eavesdrops on Abe and his missus in their White House boudoir as they reflect on the state of their union.

It seems timely then that a diligently researched if dense tome written by the esteemed Wesleyan University academic and cinematic soothsayer Jeanine Basinger should arrive now, providing an insightful account of how films have represented wedlock, both holy and unholy, through the years.

Like an earnest suitor, the author is upfront about her scholarly though not-all-that pedantic approach. Her purpose is not to put the marriage movie on the couch, wax on about cultural currents or to pontificate about gender-related issues, but simply to enumerate and categorize how countless features — both classics (The Thin Man series with that wifely ideal Myrna Loy opposite debonair detective William Powell) and less-familiar fare (Bette Davis in the divorce-centric Payment on Demand with Barry Sullivan) portrayed such bonds, for better or for worse.

The author quickly plows through the silent era — when marriage movies actually were rampant and would be turned into an art form by such auteurs as Ernst Lubitsch and Cecil B. DeMille — and wraps up with the modern era, starting with the '70s when the sexual revolution, feminism and a soaring divorce rate caused routine domesticity to be relegated to sitcoms such as All in the Family and Happy Days.

But the meat of the book is the period in between, from the arrival of talkies and the dominance of the studio system to the saturation of TV and the spread of risk-taking art-house fare. There can be nothing less satisfying than settling for a summary of a film you would rather just see for yourself. But Basinger has a gift for zeroing in on tantalizing details that bring a visual medium to readable life.

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